350 DRUNKENNESS. 



limiting our desires, is like cutting off our feet when we want shoes. 

 But he not only acknowledges the parallel, but performs the opera- 

 ton ; and the consequence is, that upon the present question he has 

 not a leg that he can stand upon. 



We are far from regarding the prevalence of drunkenness as a fit 

 subject for mirth, still less should we be disposed to treat with un- 

 becoming levity any well-considered, sober, effectual, moral check 

 that might be devised with a view to its extinction ; but when we 

 cannot perceive that drunkenness has so much increased of late years; 

 and when we behold the most preposterous assertions standing father 

 to the most absurd and bungling expedients that were ever contrived 

 by imbecility for the adoption of one of the most enlightened nations 

 in the world, we must confess that, however much Mr. Buckingham 

 may be inclined to assert 



" To laugh were want of decency and grace," 



we must still quiet the compunctious vibrations of our exhausted 

 midriff by suggesting to it as a palliation, 



" But to be grave exceeds all power of face." 



Mr. Buckingham prefaces4iis report with some explanatory obser- 

 vations. Amonst other things he says, 



" I am one of those who believe, and before many years are over, mil- 

 lions will believe it as firmly as I do now, that of all the single evils that 

 afflict our community, there is not one that produces so many arid such 

 aggravated ills as the folly, the vice, and the crime of intemperance. If, 

 then, we place restraints on human liberty, by the establishment of quaran- 

 tine and police restrictions to prevent the spread of cholera, and by nightly 

 and daily patroles to guard the lives and properties of the innocent and un- 

 offending, I conceive that it is no greater infringement on private rites to 

 subject to equal restraints those sources of a pestilence far more destruc- 

 tive in its hourly ravages than all the visitations of cholera that ever ap- 

 peared, ' a pestilence that walketh at noonday/ arid is rapidly destroying 

 the labour, the wealth, the morals, and the happiness of millions of the 

 people ; while their rulers and their representatives, as well as their pro- 

 fessed teachers and instructors, think that honest and disinterested at- 

 tempts to stay this torrent of destruction, form a fit subject for merriment 

 and jest, for mockery and scorn !" 



If it be true, as Mr. Buckingham alleges, that the rulers and re- 

 presentatives of the people, as well as their professed teachers and 

 instructors, treat the efforts of his committee in the cause of sobriety 

 with merriment and jest with mockery and scorn one would ima- 

 gine that even Mr. Buckingham would nave sense enough to perceive 

 that their merriment and jest have been occasioned by the outrageous 

 catalogue of evils that may, or can, or might, or could, or should 

 attend drunkenness ; and that their mockery and scorn have been 

 created by the gravely absurd attempts of those who do, or did, or 

 shall, or will, prepare such remedies for the evil. As for the parallel 

 attempted to be drawn between cholera and intemperance, it is 

 merely childish the impotent twaddle of a perplexed quidnunc. 

 What analogy is there in the two cases ? The cholera is a pestilence 

 that comes, certainly, without being sent for ; and any " restraints 

 on human liberty," in the way of precaution, are not only necessary, 



